Bedford Church of Christ
Bedford, Tarrant County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Founded about 1874 by members of Spring Garden Church of Christ, this congregation was originally called New Hope Church of Christ. The first meetinghouse was built here on Milton Moore's farm near a small cemetery about 1874. The church has worshiped continually at this site since its beginning. Moore deeded this five acres to the congregation in 1877. During its early years the church also served as the local school. By 1900 the name Bedford Church of Christ began to be used. In 1958 the congregation gave the original buildings to a neighboring church and built a new brick auditorium. (1983)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Founded about 1874 by members of the Spring Garden Church of Christ, this congregation—first called New Hope—built its meetinghouse on Milton Moore's farm beside a small cemetery. Moore deeded the five acres to the church in 1877, and in its early years the building also served as the community's school. The name Bedford Church of Christ came into use by 1900.
Why it matters
Like many frontier congregations, it doubled as a schoolhouse, anchoring both faith and education for a settling community.
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Related people
- · Milton Moore
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Bedford Reunion
Bedford, TX
Settlers from Bedford County, Tennessee, gave this Tarrant County community its name in the 1870s, founding New Hope Church in 1874 and, in 1882, Bedford College — a private school that doubled as the public schoolhouse and turned out graduates who became leaders across many fields. The college burned in 1894 and never reopened, but in 1912 some five hundred people gathered on the old church grounds for the first Bedford Reunion. That homecoming grew into a beloved annual event drawing crowds in the thousands, complete with sermons, music, and speeches by congressmen, until the last reunion in 1969.
Spring Garden Community
Bedford, TX
The first settler here was Samuel Cecil Holiday Witten, who came from Spring Garden, Missouri, in 1854 and lent his old hometown's name to a schoolhouse he helped build in 1865. That building doubled as chapel and meeting hall, and for a time the settlement boasted churches, a Grange, and a justice court. But fire and the rise of nearby Bedford drained the community in the 1870s, and today only a pioneer burial ground marks where it stood.
Elisha Adam Euless
Euless, TX
Elisha Adam Euless left Tennessee for Tarrant County in 1867 and became one of the men whose enterprise shaped its rural map. A successful cotton-and-corn farmer and elected constable and later sheriff, he bought land around a two-story grange hall whose lower floor served as school and church, and later acquired a tract with a cotton gin. The community that grew up around the gin and grange took his name, and a post office opened as Euless in 1886.
Isham Chapel Methodist Church
Hurst, TX
Organized in the 1870s with eleven charter members, this congregation was named for its founding minister, the Rev. Marion Isham. In 1876 B. H. Ross donated land for a church and school, and the small frame building doubled as a community schoolhouse until 1891. In 1952 the growing fellowship moved to Hurst, where it worships today as First United Methodist Church.